Airplane fatalities must be reduced. Moreover, they can be reduced! There is absolutely no sensible reason why all efforts toward this end should be confined solely to preventing the crashes! It is obvious that accidents are still happening. The job now is to make planes withstand them better. It can be done!

by George Daniels Aviation Editor

TOO many people are killed in airplane crashes. It’s about time to realize that pilots aren’t supermen. Accidents continue to happen and there’s no sense in claiming they can be entirely prevented. The only intelligent thing to do is to build the planes to withstand as violent a smashup as Possible.

You won’t feel cramped or hemmed in aboard the JetStar. Even on long trips, big active men find plenty of room for comfort on this largest of corporate jets. There’s space, too, for the tables, desks and lounge furnishings you choose, or for 10 airline-type passenger seats. And more room for galley, private lavatory, separate pilot’s flight deck and a generous amount of baggage.

How much do you know about the planes you fly in, and how they are guided from city to city? What do you know about weather, and how your pilot copes with it?

Here are answers to some of the questions that occur to almost every air traveler. They were compiled by Eastern Air Lines, which found that passengers have a lively interest in all kinds of flight operations. EAL collected questions and answered them in a booklet, which explains many expressions the layman either hears or sees in print.

All the characteristics of a mammoth ocean liner are reproduced in the “Columbus,” the miniature ship shown above. It is 25 feet long and was constructed by a German engineer at a cost of #4000. Top photo shows the model coming into dock under its own power after a practice spin; below it appears a close-up of the ship. It is driven by an electric motor.

Neil Hamilton, movie actor, demonstrates a revolving camera for taking “dizzy” shots in which rooms and people tumble all over the screen.

With newer, faster supersonic planes, the sonic boom will become as inevitable and unavoidable as thunder. Since we can’t escape it, the next best thing is to understand it. This article, condensed with permission from “Air Force-Space Digest,” official journal of the Air Force Association, tells the story.

THE advantages to be obtained from flying bombs are self-evident and the various nations of the world have been trying to develop these mechanically controlled, death dealing planes for the past many years. Every so often an article appears in a newspaper which indicates that France, England, Italy, or some other country has perfected an airplane which takes off, flies through the air for an appreciable time and lands without human hands touching either the airplane or engine controls.

So that high-altitude ball-outs will not kill, the fast new planes are being designed to cone apart, allowing a safe drop in a tight capsule.

BY ERIC SLOANE

4 T 60,000 feet the flyer’s plane becomes his cell of life, its equipment almost as important as his own body. Outside the plane the cold of space is of instant-freeze intensity, much colder than any thickness of clothing could protect from. It is so thin that an exposed human’s body would cease to function. Blood would boil there at body temperature. Death from oxygen lack would occur quickly. Accordingly, the high-altitude plane has a cabin pumped with high-pressure air. Heated clothing is plugged into the plane’s power line.

AT NOON, May 15, 1918, four pilots stood beside their planes ready to take off on the first official attempt to carry mail by air. That day was the beginning of a thing that has spread, not only through the United States, but into all of North America. Since that day millions of dollars have been spent, planes have been wrecked, and pilots killed, but the air mail goes on and it stands today as one of the great affairs of the nation.

Jacques Gerin, French engineer, who invented the plane with variable wing: surfaces illustrated in our December, 1932, issue, has a new design for a 20-passenger ship in which the rear of the body flattens out into a spatula-shaped tail. With 3440 horsepower, he expects a speed of 310 miles an hour and a range of 2,500 miles. Landing: speed low— 25 miles an hour.

The Sonic Altimeter, described on this page, is the latest way to conquer the fog menace. Above is shown a pilot with the stethoscope receiver adjusted for a fog landing.

The Sonic Altimeter sending megaphone in place on a mail plane. The drawing at the top shows the complete installation and explains how the device works. The drawing at the right shows the path of the sound waves in recording altitude.